I've been thinking about upgrading my Marantz SR5006 receiver. I'm not really sure what I'm looking for so I decided to go ahead and post and get some help. The biggest reason I'm deciding on upgrading is to bring new life to my 7.2 system which consist of EMPs Impression Series, along with two PSA XV15. I guess you could say looking for more power/higher sound quality along with cool new features. My budget for this upgrade is around $1600 give or take. Any suggestions will be highly appreciated.

You know I almost bought an external amp a few weeks ago. But the guys over in EMPs owners thread said I didn't need it. They said I would be disappointed if I was expecting an external amp to improve my sound performance. Here's the link to EMPs thread look at post #1965 http://www.avsforum.com/t/1101727/official-emp-owners-thread/1950

If you want to stay with Marantz, the 5008 and 6008 use the same version of Audyssey MultEQ XT as the 5006 so it would be a lateral move other than new features; however, stepping up to the 7008, it uses the most advanced version of Audyssey MultEQ XT32 with 32x higher speaker filter resolution than XT.